…you can’t make clotted cream with mass market cream? Reader Jools, I think it does. I have yet to try that, but it’s my belief that the stabilizing molecules in mass-market cream will prevent the dairy fat globules it contains from clumping up together in quite the same way. My belief is that you’ll get […]

Reader Ellen asks:

I’ve been trying to track down the answer to this one for a while…maybe you or some of your dairy chemist followers can [help]? I am looking for a (ballpark) estimate on the fat content of manually skimmed raw milk. That is, I let the cream separate in my half gallon of milk for a day or more, then I remove as much of the cream as is possible with a scoop of some kind. Any idea what the approximate fat content would be of the remaining milk? (The milk is from pastured cows, though I really don’t need that level of accuracy.)

Reader Cici writes in to ask:

What is homogenization and why must all grocery store milk be homogenized and/or stabilized?

The trouble with cream for big commercial processors is that it separates easily. The fat globules that make up 36 (or more) percent of it tend to become attracted to one another and clump up into…well, you can see the results below. Homogenization — essentially hot, high-pressure spraying that tears large fat globules into teeny tiny pieces and distributes them evenly through the milk — helps to inhibit that natural separation.

Most days I’m one of those cynics who thinks the local foods movement is overdone. Oversold, over-hyped, overwrought…over pretty much everything. But today is not one of those days. Why? Because this morning I opened up a glass bottle of locally-produced cream and found this:

Reader Kim, writes:

I have a couple lactose-intolerant folks in my house, and we sometimes bake with rice milk instead of cow’s milk. I’ve noticed a stark difference in the leavening and texture of pancakes and popovers when I use regular milk. With regular (cow’s) milk, the pancakes and popovers are fluffier and rise higher. With rice milk, they don’t rise as much, and have a gummier, gooey texture. Is it the magic of milk solids? The protein content? The fat? The type of sugars?

Reader Anna wrote in late last week to ask why big heat (i.e. around 500 degrees Fahrenheit) helps shortbread-type cakes like scones and American biscuits rise higher. Anna, you’ve made me a very happy blogger this Monday morning. Leavening is a fascinating, fascinating subject.

Had another email mishap over the weekend. I lost about a week’s worth. So if you sent me something and didn’t get a reply, please try again. I promise not to be so clumsy until the next time it happens.

That’s an awfully difficult question to answer. There’s no question that scones are descendants of Scottish oat and/or barley cakes. The word is actually Scottish in origin. “Skons” is how they pronounce them up that way. “Skoans” is the pronunciation I mostly heard down in Devon and Cornwall.

The barley cakes of old weren’t polite little circular scones like they have all over Britain today. A couple of hundred years ago they were made in one large, flat round which was placed on a hot griddle and flipped, sort of like a huge pancake. The finished cake was then cut into big wedges which were then buttered and eaten hot.